To Die For

A few hours later, Hermione woke to hushed voices coming from the other side of the hospital wing. One of the people talking definitely was a male, she could tell because of the deep voice. He sounded urgent and intimidating in a way. The other voice was quieter and had a frightened tone to it. It was harder to tell whether it was male or female. She felt her leg fall asleep and go numb from laying on it. She rolled over to ease the dead feeling in her leg. She glanced up and saw Draco sitting in a small chair looking down at her. Why would he be sitting there? He looked different then Hermione usually saw him, probably because his lips wasn't stretched into that awful sneer that usually covered his face when he looked at her.

"Listen," he whispered, indicating the voices that were now rising in volume.

Hermione started to shake her head again, and then remembered about her cut. She tried to focus on the voices to hear what they were saying. The male's voice rose suddenly and started to shout.

"YOU DAMN WELL KNOW WHAT I MEAN, AND I AM NOT GOING TO TAKE LESS THAN WHAT IS BEING ASKED FOR! AS FOR YOUR CURSED DAUGHTER, YOU BETTER JUST LEAVE HER OUT OF THIS. AM I MAKING MYSELF CLEAR?" After this loud lecture, that Hermione could picture the whole school hearing, came a small, almost squeaky voice,

Hermione was stunned when he pulled his wand out of his robe pocket and pointed it toward them. "Did you hear it all? Did you hear everything that was said?"

Hermione didn't know what to say.

"No, Sir," Draco muttered.

Snape looked like he didn't believe them and didn’t unclench his hand from around his wand handle. "If I find out otherwise…" Snape said half to himself. He seemed to suddenly pull himself together, then quickly walked to the door. A few seconds later a subtle man came out from the office and exited the hospital wing, neither Hermione nor Draco had ever seen him before.

Hermione shrugged her shoulders. As always she wanted to know an answer to a question. Except this time it was almost impossible to get an answer; she couldn't just use a book for reference. The thought of asking Snape wasn't even an option, he would just tell her off for being nosy. Leaving that question behind, she finally voiced what had been bothering her since she had first knocked into Draco.

"Draco? Um…how come you're being so nice to me? I mean, well you know…like you're acting different them normally. Like, more considerate…you haven’t, er, called me mudblood at all." Hermione was relieved to get done with asking that, even with all the stuttering, and awaited Draco's answer.

Draco was silent for a second and looked down at his knees. He fidgeted, probably really uncomfortable with being asked that question. Hermione hoped that his response would be good. Then, after that moment of waiting, which had seemed like hours to Hermione but in reality had only been a minute, he looked up straight into her eyes. She was taken aback at how sincere they were.

"I, I guess that, um, well…" Draco stuttered and obviously didn’t know how to explain it. Hermione wanted to help him, but didn’t get the chance. Less frantic voices than before drifted over to the bed and reminded Hermione of the earlier episode. She almost choked when she saw her two best friends walking by the three small windows on the other side of the hospital wing, and heading for the entrance. She was using all her will power to stop them from coming in-she didn’t know what they would do, especially Ron, if they saw Draco sitting by her bed. Draco looked over at her and followed her eyes over to what they were resting on. Without wasting a second, he hopped up and had sprinted out the door, not even glancing back at Hermione. She looked back toward the window and could see Draco’s retreating back. She saw Ron’s hand go toward his pocket; she presumed that his wand was there. As always, Harry grabbed Ron before he could do anything crazy. Ron gave one more vicious look in Draco’s direction, who was pretty much ignoring them, then followed Harry toward the hospital wing’s door.

For a moment Harry paused, probably telling Ron not to rave about Malfoy or anything else that might bother Hermione in her condition. Typical Harry. As if Hermione would’ve cared. Sometimes, she thought, she was treated too much as a younger sister and not as a friend. Ron and Harry seemed to overprotect her, as if she was extremely vulnerable to danger. She was head girl for goodness’ sake, when would they realize that? Not as if she didn’t enjoy their company, they were as close as friends could be and she couldn’t wait to see them. In fact she had really been looking forward to it.

"Hermione!!" She heard her name being called and looked up to see her two friends. They looked almost as worried as Draco had been, if not even more. Ginny came running up with a "wait for me!" and "Hey Hermione!"

"What did he do to you?! Why was he here?!" Ron said frantically, looking again as he had out in the hallway. "Did he do-" Harry gave him a death glare and shut Ron up from whatever else he had been about to say. Hermione decided to answer his first question anyway. She thought about it, then said,

"Actually, I was in a hurry and ran into him. Draco helped me up here because I had hurt my head when I had fallen. He didn’t do anything suspicious, and we didn’t really talk at all because I was asleep." Hermione paused here for a moment, debating on whether or not to tell her friends about her brief encounter with Snape, but then decided against it. "He was even nice to me. He only left because he saw you two."

Ginny, Ron, and Harry gaped at her and then Ron started laughing.

"You’re kidding, right?" Ron bent over in laughter. "Malfoy was being nice to you? That’s a really good one."

"Yea, you almost got us there, 'Mione!" Harry followed up.

Ginny, who had become one of Hermione’s good friends lately, looked first at Ron and Harry, who was now also laughing, and then over to Hermione who was sitting on the hospital bed with an unamused expression on her face.

"Um, guys? I don' t think she was kidding."

Ron and Harry looked up, red from laughing and stunned. For awhile no one said anything. Ron looked worse then he had when he had found out that Draco was going to be head boy.

Harry broke the silence. "That's really strange. Who would've thought the Malfoy had a nice side to him."

Ron looked as if he was going to barf at that comment. Hermione was still silent.

Suddenly, Madam Pomfry came out of her office. "Ok! We need to break this party up here. Miss. Granger, you are fine to go. Just be cautious with that cut on your head. I’ve alerted Professor Ludar, your Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, why you weren’t in class. She said to try to get the notes from today's class from someone."

"Thanks! I’ll do that!" Hermione said cheerfully as the friendly nurse headed back to her office. To her friends she said, "I’ll catch up with you guys in a minute, I need to organize my books."

"Ok, see ya 'Mione." Harry and Ron walked out the door waving over the shoulders. Ginny stood there biting her lip.

"Yea?" Hermione asked.

"Hermione? Um, you called Malfoy, Draco."

Hermione jumped upon hearing his name. What was Ginny getting at? "I guess I just wasn’t thinking about it."

"Exactly, so is there something going on here?" Ginny questioned slowly.

"NO! I mean, I guess he was being nice to me and all…"

"Hello, Hermione! He’s like the hottest, not to mention cutest, guy in the school. He could have any girl he wanted. I could understand why you would fall for him. I’m not going to, like, tell the whole school or anything." Ginny said, half lecturing.

"Well, I guess he is a little cute. But nothing happened between us." Hermione added that second sentence quickly. "But he's always been such a jerk to me, why would he be nice now? Anyway, I’m just a mudblood, Gin, he’d never fall for me."

"Are you admitting you think he’s cute?"

"Gin, you really shouldn’t be going on about other boys when you’ve got yourself a pretty fine boyfriend. Especially one like Harry. He’s got to be about the sweetest guy in the grade." At this Ginny blushed. "And I still don’t know how you two got together. Hermione said this quickly to change the way the conversation was going and also because she did sort of want to know how they had hooked up.

Ginny’s eyes brightened on this and Hermione could tell she had hit on a good topic. The two girls, linked arm and arm, made their way out of the hospital wing, Ginny going on and on about how Harry had stayed with her family over the summer and had finally asked her out with Fred and George’s persistent help. Something she had been wishing for since she had first met him. This made Hermione laugh. When they got to the portrait for the Head Girl and Head boy dormitory Ginny was still talking full speed and had to leave out some of the extra details she would’ve liked to have added in to finish. She said bye and good luck, (because of Draco), to Hermione and walked down the hallway, carefree in a way that Hermione was jealous of.

She looked up at the portrait of the two little boys and their mother and saw that there was an extra boy playing with the two already there. She wondered what part of the castle he had ventured from. The mother, Prudence, was looking down at Hermione, awaiting the password. Hermione hesitated, not knowing if Draco would be inside or not. She hoped he wouldn’t, but bet that he would. If he was in there she thought about what she would say, or if she would say anything. She should probably stay quiet, or maybe she would ask the dreaded question again. She really wanted to know his answer. Thinking about this was making her anxious. Hermione took a deep breath and said open sesame, the pointless password that obviously Draco had picked out.

The portrait slid open to reveal an empty common room, thank God. It was a pretty elaborate room and Hermione had fallen for it when she had first set her eyes on it. There was a fire blazing in the large fireplace with a mantle to keep little decorations on. On it already before Hermione or Draco had come was a small statue of a golden lion, with its mouth wide open as if in mid-roar, representing Gryffindor, and a deadly green and black snake with piercing eyes for Slytherin. Against Draco’s opposition she had placed her collection of little ceramic animals, some of which were a small gray rabbit with one foot above the ground, a raccoon with it’s paws up in front of it, and a tiny pale pink pig looking up innocently. She had been collecting them for years now. In front of the fire there was an oversized couch and a couple velvet chairs. On one side of the room there were two desks for Hermione and Draco to work on, unfortunately they were rather close together. On the opposite side of the room there were two doors and two portraits. One of the doors consisted of an intricate, curvy H carved into it, and the other a D. They led to their private rooms. The portrait of the old man and his frisky dog led to the Gryffindor common room, and the other, with a skinny lady pointing her nose in the air and dresses in all black was for the Slytherin common room. There was magic involved to have the portraits lead straight into the common rooms.

Hermione reached for the antique wooden handle carved with flowers on her door to her room. The door next to hers abruptly opened and Draco came out. His face showed no sign of feeling. He ignored Hermione and walked over to his desk with a pile of books in his hands. Hermione entered her room before he could turn around and see her staring at him. She looked around at the happy yellow walled room and wished that she could be more in the mood to enjoy it.

She flopped down on the bed covered with a red, soft comforter. She was about to drift off when her window suddenly banged open and something black hurtled through, shooting straight for her.